After months of waiting for the first Verizon 4G LTE to be released, we’re finally almost there. You’ve probably seen advertisements for the HTC Thunderbolt for a while now, despite not having a release date. Today we finally know for sure that the phone will be out this Thursday.

On March 17 Verizon will start selling the Thunderbolt for $249.99. It will mark the first 4G LTE phone from Verizon that we can actually buy. In case you’ve forgotten about ti since it was first announced, the Thunderbolt is essentially the Evo 4G with LTE instead of WiMAX and a slight upgrade in the CPU. It sports a 4.3-inch screen, 8 MP camera capable of 720p video, and a 1.3 MP front-facing camera. The Thunderbolt is powered by the latest 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU (MSM8655, for those who know the model numbers).

While I was pretty underwhelmed by the design of the Thunderbolt at CES (it looks like an Evo crossed with the HD7), it certainly seemed like a great phone. It was pretty quick, and the 4G was fast. Real world experience may differ, but if you’ve been waiting for a fast phone on Verizon’s 4G network, you only have to wait two more days.